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Cambodia: September-October 2009

Angkor Wat World Heritage site	Cardamom Mountains Biosphere Reserve	Phomn Penh	Tonle Sap World Heritage Site
Indonesia: August - September 2009

Gunung Gede Pangrango National Park & World Heritage Site, Java	Gunung Leuser National Park & World Heritage Site, Sumatra	Morowali Strict Nature Reserve & To Wana Forest People, Biosphere Reserve, Sulawesi	Ujung Kulon National Park & World Heritage Site, Java

Vietnam: September 2009
	Cat Ba Biosphere Reserve & World Heritage Site	Red River Delta (Xuan Thuy) Biosphere Reserve and World Heritage Site

India: October 2009
	Sunderbans & Kolkata	Tamil Nadu

UNESCO WORLD HERITAGE-ASIA. 

Statement

On assignment for UNESCO-Asia I traveled for nine weeks this fall through four countries -- Indonesia, Vietnam, Cambodia and India -- and photographed 12 sites, World Heritage sites or Biosphere Reserves or both.  My brief was to cover Education -- the biodiversity, the habitat, the central theme of the reserve, and make the shots memorable -- Science -- what’s going on to preserve, enhance, protect the reserve, and what is happening with climate change mitigation, water use and abuse -- and the Cultural aspects of the reserve -- indigenous cultures and pressures on the sites.   

I found one central theme throughout -- survival.  As Amitav Ghosh said in The Hungry Tide,  “Who are we?  We are the dispossessed . . . a question being addressed to the very heavens, ... on behalf of a bewildered humankind.  Who, indeed, are we?  Where do we belong?”  Survival, human, animal, plant -- and the control of resources, water, food and shelter, is what we all seek, from the wealthiest to the most wretched of the dispossessed.  But if the natural world “loses,” then we all lose. 

Unlike other animals, humans have asked for divine help, and as a sub-theme of my journey I have considered the effect of cultural spirituality, or lack thereof, on the natural world.  I was in Indonesia, a largely Muslim country, during  Ramadan, but it also has a strong Protestant minority, and in Vietnam, Cambodia and India visiting different Buddhist traditions, Catholic and Protestant communities, Hindus, animists and non-believers, as true communists would like to be considered.  Which cultures exploit the earth for their own short term benefit?  How would one define that -- not killing cows, for example, or over-populating the earth, or extracting from the rain forest only that which is immediately consumed or directly used?  Who, then, might be the most ‘holy?’

Enjoy this sampling of my photos, but please ponder the bigger questions.

The highlight of my work was India, in the Sunderbans, the largest mangrove forest in the world, the deltaic confluence of many south Asian rivers carrying silt and waste from the Himalayas to the Bay of Bengal south of Kolkata.  The Sunderbans and its 25-30 foot tides daily and four million odd dispossessed Bengalis and others from the sub-continent still supports the greatest density of Royal Bengal Tigers in the world.  They are known as the Man-Eaters of the Sunderbans because it has been documented for nearly 200 years that they often prefer human meat.  They kill an average of one human every other day, year in and year out since records have been kept.  Yet they are rarely seen in this vast tidal and mangrove wilderness. 

The Goddess of the Forest, prayed to by Buddhist, Hindu and Muslim alike, is Bonabibi.  She is the protector of the men and women who eke out a living by fishing the low tide sloughs, or, in season, gathering honey.  My last full day in the Sunderbans, as a guest of the Director of the Forest, I visited one of the remote camps and found the local workmen in the midst of a ceremony thanking Bonabibi for saving the life of a fisherman who had been very ill.  I joined, at their invitation, lit some incense and quietly asked Bonabibi to let me see a tiger.

Not two hours later, soon after sunset, we spotted a tiger swimming the 200 yard odd waterway toward a village.  Balanced on the open bow of the boat I started shooting, even in the very low light, as she swam with amazing power and grace back toward the shore, took a second or two to look back at us (my two Rangers were jumping around on the bow with excitement), then took her final few strokes and almost literally exploded out of the water, across the few feet of muddy bank and into the forest.  I could almost swear, though, that when she turned around she winked at me, Bonabibi, perhaps, answering my prayer, Bonabibi, perhaps, transformed into one of the most beautiful creatures on the face of the earth attesting to the power of the natural world.